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threats and opportunities and one case when a misperceived opportunity corresponded
with an undetected threat.
We shall conclude this review of foreign policy mistakes by U.S. presidents with
a brief analysis of the Bush Administration’s decision-making regarding the war on terror
plus the invasion and occupation of Iraq. In this section we also draw on U.S. foreign
policy decisions in the 9/11 era to illustrate violations of strategic rationality resulting in
foreign policy mistakes.
The 9/11 era encompasses not only the time period following
this tragic day, but also the period leading up to it. Our argument is that paradigmatic
mistakes in Figure 2 were committed in this era, which we discuss as three case studies of
policy episodes below. First, errors of omission resulted in a deterrence mistake and led
to the 9/11 attacks. Second, errors of commission resulted in a false alarm mistake and
the subsequent invasion of Iraq. Third, errors of commission and omission resulted in a
diagnostic false hope mistake and a prescriptive reassurance mistake contributing to the
perpetuation of Iraq’s desolate postwar situation. All three policy episodes also involved
mistakes in which the United States did not take sufficient account of an opponent’s
actions in making foreign policy decisions.
THE 9/11 ERA AND U.S. FOREIGN POLICY MISTAKES
Case #1: Prior to 9/11 – Errors of Omission
The horrific events of 9/11 stand as one of the most defining moments in U.S. history.
The attacks in New York and Washington killed nearly 3,000 people and they would alter
in fundamental ways the foreign policy of the Bush administration. On the same night the
President noted in his diary, “the Pearl Harbor of the 21
st
century took place today.” He
subsequently observed that “night had fallen on a different world,” and urged
governments around the world to participate in a “global war on terrorism” (qtd. in
Woodward, 2004: 24 and Shawcross, 2004: 11). It was soon after the terrorist attacks that
the question “Could they have been averted?” emerged – a question that would also stand
at the center of the 9/11 Commission’s investigation.
Our assessment is that mistakes were committed in the prelude to 9/11 and that
the possibility of averting an attack of the experienced magnitude was indeed present.
Drawing on the accounts of participants and close observers of the policymaking process
before 9/11 we can identify this policy episode as containing diagnostic and prescriptive
failures of omission leading to a deterrence mistake in Figure 2, i.e. the threat was not
detected as such and for too long there was no sufficient action undertaken to deter the
assault.
The al Qaeda threat had loomed large already during the Clinton presidency.
Examples were the August 1998 attacks on U.S. embassies in Africa and subsequently
the bombing of the USS Cole in October 2000. Upon the change of administrations in the
White House, President Clinton’s national security adviser Sandy Berger warned the
incoming new security adviser Condoleezza Rice, “you’re going to spend more time
during your four years on terrorism generally and al Qaeda specifically than any other
Convention